


Butterfly and the Knife

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 1964 Japan, Crime, Drag Race, Gambling Hall, Gangster Oikawa, Gangster Ushijima, Heroin, Heroin Addict Kageyama, M/M, Multi, Murder, Murderously Jealous Oikawa, Prison, Prostitution, Yakuza, repost from old account
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-08-20 22:42:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: 1964.After serving three years of time for a wrongly convicted murder, Ushijima returns to his former life as a gangster in the gambling halls of his past. All he wants is to reunite with Kageyama. When Ushijima finds him ravaged by heroin, he vows to stay by Kageyama’s side. He soon learns that he must contend with a second threat in the form of a possessive rival.[Based on the film Pale Flower]





	1. Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Hi,  
I’m reposting (some of) my haikyuu fics from my Old Account. This is the first one. Hope you can time-travel with this machine.

_ Kageyama, _

_Don’t wait up for me._

_Would that I knew a way to suffuse your bones with the holy oil of my love, upon your waking resounding through your head with the strange clarity of a forgotten dream._

_Sweet butterfly, go on winging._

* * *

“Ushijima.”

Fading into his dream like a piano tune played in the next room, the guard’s voice coaxed him awake.

The cell door moaned open. A chill, so complete as to flood him with visions of a dense embankment shedding a mound of snow, clacked his teeth. Groaning with the creak of rusted door hinges, his knees came alive as he drew himself to his feet.

For three years, he had called the cell home. He found, upon his leaving, that he’d miss it. The vestiges of sorrow, put to death by paintings undertaken of his lover’s face in his head, stroke by stroke, bid him farewell with a palpable heaviness.

_Do you remember?_

All through the night. Kageyama spiraling, undone, rocking through sobs so torrential their inexhaustible multitude deadened him with awe.

Only by loving within an inch of murder, depleting the rich spring of adoration to a trickling well, did he find comfort, unraveling in Ushijima’s arms.

* * *

Tokyo, without his knowledge, had grown overconfident. Boasting of its lurid indulgences with the flagrant defiance of yamaoroshi, the Snake God, it beckoned him back to the Karasuno Gambling Hall.

Kageyama, unavoidable, heeding no warnings at the consequences of voicing an honest opinion, haunted the establishment’s squid inked walls at all hours. In his youth, fresh-faced and uprooted from a comfortable life of wealth in favor of debauchery and depravity, he had uncoiled the twisted longing in Ushijima’s chest by sitting at his side, advising him in the calculated art of winning.

It became apparent that he possessed a gift beyond analyzing, a madness so acute and disarming it preceded him among the wizened regulars that had darkened Karasuno’s doorstep for years.

In due course, Kageyama began to share his secrets, and soon, with a smug discretion, his bed.

Reasoning with himself, Ushijima found jealousy a bane of productivity, the cruelest thief of one’s time. He saw to it that Kageyama dallied with whomever he chose, in so doing managing to carve himself an irreplaceable lodging in Kageyama’s heart.

This veneer of benevolence extended to all but one man: Oikawa.

Rather than preparing for their inexorable reunion, Ushijima reacquainted himself with the shabby apartments, the prostitutes idling by running engines, the livid red glow of the pleasure houses. Kageyama, he thought, must still court death under Oikawa’s faithful tutelage, screeching past the boundary of the horizon in drag race after drag race. He himself had something of a talent, endearing him to his elders. Withdrawing, he preferred to keep Kageyama from harm, though more often than not he endangered the both of them.

Such was his thinking upon lumbering past Oikawa at the gambling hall’s entrance. He shuddered when the captivating man snagged on the crease of his freshly pressed blazer. “You’re expecting your whore, I take it,” he said.

_This, then, has not changed_. Their discourse, winding in circles, solved nothing. Ushijima sighed.

“You won’t find him here.” Years had treated Oikawa’s face with the utmost kindness. Usually leaking the youth from one’s face, the wrinkles crinkling around Oikawa’s face illuminated his beauty.

“My bets are on that slut guzzling saké in some godforsaken izakaya or nursing his white lady.”

Panic, a siren’s descending wail, pounded through Ushijima’s ears. The former; heavens, not the latter.

“Let them know I’m back,” he said, treading on unsteady feet. Glistening in his smart white suit, Oikawa smiled.

“It’s spread by now, no doubt. Your concubine’s in the dark, however. Of that I am certain.” Stifling an impulse to gut the man, Ushijima surrendered to a faint tremor, regarding his hand with a hostile detachment.

“You might think your showering this spray of insults on Tobio endears you to me. I assure you, Oikawa; it curdles my blood.”

He half expected a shot to the head as he receded from view. But then, Oikawa had always held more of a fondness for words.

* * *

Shuttered in a dilapidated row of shambles, his apartment advertised its disrepair with a shit-eating grin. Ushijima bore no resentment toward its condition, having given it up to the gods in favor of caring for its second inhabitant.

In a vivid pool of darkness, Kageyama sat, one rumpled sleeve rolling up his arm. Washed out, the once death-defying gleam of his eyes now saw his small universe through a sheen of slush. Ascetic cheekbones fought for dominance of his face, giving the impression of a starved monk in want of worship.

Weeping, Ushijima rocked on his knees. Startled, Kageyama’s ashen lips parted.

“Where’d you go, Toshi?” His watery voice trilled with a cadence of disuse. What need does one have for companionship when the white lady loves you? Crawling on the moth-eaten carpet, Ushijima swept him into his arms, submerging himself in the slick grease of his thick dark hair.

“Oh, sweet baby. Who did this to you?” With a surprising show of force, Kageyama wriggled free from his arms, stripping off his damp white button-down shirt. Sliding on his knees, he turned his back, revealing a tapestry of riotous color that covered the entire half of his body. On the inside of his right wrist, Ushijima saw imprinted in ink the familiar characters for Aoba Jousai.

“_Oikawa_.” Slurring, drunk on the word, Ushijima bit into his neck, searching out a vein, smothered in want of familiar moans.

“Kill him, Toshi. Slice that pretty motherfucker’s face in two.” Hissing, Kageyama swerved, pouncing on his stomach, something rabid slackening his jaw. “Don’t chickenshit yourself outta this one. If I lose you again, I’m gonna find myself a woman and we’ll kill ourselves. Double suicide. Outta one of Dazai’s novels.”

In one gulp, dried tears staining his cheeks, Ushijima devoured him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	2. Ousted

They slept through the morning, Kageyama no longer stirring in a stream of his own tears. Ushijima roused himself to find him propped ramrod straight against the headboard, smoking. Gently, Ushijima extinguished the flame with two fingers, shredding the remnants of the vice on the rumpled linen blanket.

“They help the craving.” Slumping on his wrists, Kageyama sighed. “I’ll help you kill him, Toshi.”

Last time, they had gone about it in the way of amateurs. They waited until Iwaizumi, whittled down to a bloodshot wraith, lost enough of his senses to shoot Aoba Jousai’s boss, Irihata, in the head. Oikawa had yet to forget the deaths of his first love and mentor.

Soon after killing Irihata, Iwaizumi had taken a stroll by moonlight over a quiet canal and leapt to his death.

“Just like Dazai,” Kageyama had said on the morning after, reading a dog-eared penny dreadful in Ushijima’s arms.

Later that day, Aoba Jousai had let themselves into the apartment through the kitchen door, filching the cash Ushijima had salvaged behind the rice cooker in a rusted tea tin, shattering the sitting room windows and slashing the threadbare tatami lining the floor.

All of this Ushijima bore with a passive resignation until Kageyama blew a raging tornado through their bedroom, looking in desperation for a photograph of his childhood friend, Hinata. By nightfall, he had desecrated the fragile confines of the apartment into a spartan ruin, his arms littered with angry red splinters, heaving with wordless sobs.

“They killed Hinata. They already took him from me once. God only knows why Oikawa’s so certain I’ll spare his life. If I can kill Oikawa Tooru on my last day on earth, I’ll die a happy man.”

Yet, Ushijima heard a calcified wall crumble in Kageyama’s voice, giving way to a need he no longer controlled. Part of Kageyama belonged to Oikawa, the part of him trodden underfoot by a biblical vengeance. Their bond transcended the mortal conventions between men. Ushijima surprised himself by pondering over whom Kageyama would miss more should both of them meet their end.

Thoughts like that invariably lead to trouble. Shaking sleep from his eyes, he spread Kageyama prone on his stomach, opening him with a deft, torturous tenderness. Entering him in one fluid motion, Ushijima stormed through the years of their parting, at once reawakening a maddening yearning for their love to sustain him.

“Why did you _leave_ me?” His voice breaking, Kageyama buried his head in the fathoms of the bedsheets, writhing in unendurable ecstasy. “Don’t you ever leave me again.”

Muffled laughter fractured their feverish passion. Peering over his shoulder, Ushijima softened at the sight of a stocky, smiling youth with a loud foxtail’s head of hair and a thunderous gravity he wielded with an uncommon grace. “Don’t stop on my account,” he said, casting a furtive look at the open window. “We’ve got bad news, boys.”

Pushing himself out from beneath his shelter of warmth, Kageyama turned in full view of the diminutive youth. Summoning strands of the muted springtime sunshine from the open window, his buck naked body shone with a holy innocence that was enough to knock Ushijima’s breath from his lungs. “I need to hear it from you straight out, Noya. Do they want another drag race?” Gritting his teeth, Noya wrung his hands.

“Yes, but they don’t want you. They want Ushijima. Oikawa’s orders.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	3. Truce

“They want Toshi because they’re screwing with me.” Kageyama slung on his damp white shirt. As Ushijima straightened the wrinkled row of buttons, Kageyama adjusted his dented collar. “I’m going, too. I don’t trust you alone with Oikawa.”

Though going alone soothed his nerves, Ushijima relented, not wanting to spend their first day reunited in a ponderous state of worry. Pressing Kageyama’s wrist to his lips, he kissed the parched white skin, biting with the gentle tug of a loving cat.

“Expect high bets tonight,” Noya said, smiling. “The boys from Nekoma have been coming around. They’ve been betting in the millions. It’s time you came home to roost, Kageyama. No surprise our boys’ll have a warm welcome for your man.”

Demurring, Ushijima fumbled with his frayed leather belt. “Let’s go ahead and die again.” Laughing, Kageyama slid a crisp white linen shirt across Ushijima’s shoulders. Every time they dressed one another for the gambling hall, they tricked themselves into thinking they dressed for their funeral.

* * *

“Place your bets, place your bets, place your bets...”

The methodical drone rang through the hall, lulling the men into a tantalizing haze. Sitting _seiza_ for that long wore your knees down to arthritic bulges of fat, but the regulars had long since grown accustomed to their weakening limbs. Heat suffused the dark crimson of the walls, threading through the bodies, floating in stifling shrouds between the stacks of money the regulars fanned on the thick white cloth laid out in the middle of the hall. Tiles, small and rectangular, decorated with intricate swaths of vibrant paint, denoted the rising bets. Akaashi rotated the outpouring of the men, directing the game where the players steered it onward.

“Long time coming, Ushi,” he said with a small smile as his friend and the scowling young man situated themselves on either side of him. Akaashi often found himself watching out for the both of them, targets as they were for the regulars fond of jeering, and the knife besides. On multiple occasions, he had seen men meet their ends on the pair’s behalf. Neither of them had forgotten.

“Drag race tonight,” Ushijima said under his breath. “Oikawa wants me.” Worrying his lip, Akaashi made the final call, the men scurrying to place their final bets.

“Didn’t you hear, Ushi? We’re friends now.” Laughing, Kageyama swiped sweat from his forehead.

“Aoba Jousai forgave us for all wrongs,” Akaashi said, “formally, addressing the chief. I wasn’t there, mind you, but I heard about it. They took to running with us after Shiratorizawa killed Kindaichi. Onion Head. Remember him?” Kageyama nodded. “To say we’re friends now, well, that’s pushing it. But when it comes to Shiratorizawa, we’re of a like mind.”

Some of the men had begun to catch on to the discourse, stewing in the muck of their collective body heat, staring at Ushijima and Kageyama with the heavy lids of undisguised contempt.

“I can’t say I know why they want you, Ushi,” Akaashi said, scanning the rows of men for finished bets, “but I do know this; it’s bad.” He announced the game in play, the men shuffling to prepare their bets.

“Bokuto says it’s time for you to part with Shiratorizawa.” Something akin to sorrow laced Akaashi’s voice. “They’ll have seen it coming. Tendou can’t expect to keep you in his life for much longer after what’s gone down. Never mind Shirabu, and forget Semi and the rest of them.”

Bristling, the men privy to the conversation fought to maintain their equilibrium rather than brandish their razor blades and lop off a finger, any finger.

“I could never forget them,” Ushijima said. “I’ll talk to Tendou. He’ll see sense.” Akaashi shook his head, a sad smile forming an arresting portrait of beauty. Bokuto was a lucky man, Ushijima thought fondly.

“You’re familiar with the old adage,” Akaashi said. “There are two paths for men such as ourselves: prison and death. But you, well, you want to _live_. You’re one dangerous son of a bitch, Ushi.”

The blade drove through his neck so fast, Ushijima had no way to halt its passage.

Choking on his blood, Akaashi sank in a slump of cool white silk, blanketing the snow white cloth in a blackening river of red.

“Oh, sweet Jesus.”

Removing the razor blade from his friend’s neck with a practiced swiftness, Kageyama shut the eyes opened in horror. Grasping Ushijima’s hand, he dragged him from the floor.

“We gotta tell Bokuto,” he said.

“What’ll that solve, baby? Let’s bury Akaashi somewhere quiet and safe first.”

Hoisting the leaden body up with shaking hands, they bore him between the silent rows of men and up the darkened stairwell, stumbling on the laces of their dress shoes.

* * *

In the unforgiving chill of the night, neither of them noticed the engine stalling near the entrance to the gambling hall, a crowd of women lolling around the black convertible’s hood.

“Look, it’s Oikawa’s whore! And his daddy.” A shrill laugh racked through the woman’s body, her silken dove grey dress dripping down her disappearing frame, cheeks flushed with fever. Drunkenly tripping in her arms, her friend giggled, her slinky black dress hidden by the cloak of the nighttime sky.

Kageyama opened the razor blade sewn into the shredded lining of his black suit jacket and threw it. Spinning through the air like a delicate creature of the wind and the springtime, it sliced through the woman’s eyes with a surreal, deliberate slowness.

“Did you do that?” Ushijima said, the howling of the woman’s friend echoing in their wake. A wistful glint shone in Kageyama’s eyes.

“I think this time, Hinata might’ve helped me.” Ushijima smiled.

* * *

As they trudged onto an open field, the body of their friend resting in their arms in an unknown afterlife, the both of them withdrew into their fragile memories, remembering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	4. Ultimatum

Dead, the love of his life decomposing, and no one thought to tell Bokuto to his face. They thought it best to allow the news time, watching with trepidation as it evolved into a burden too staggering for any one of them to bear.

They had all feared for Keiji, Bokuto most of all.

“You’re too trusting, too good of a friend, and you don’t know how to stop forgetting yourself.” He had reminded Keiji of this any number of times over endless rounds of saké, the both of them sharing their bets in one another’s hands, content to gamble between the two of them long past morning light. Keiji would smile, only half listening, enamored with the rules of abandoning their livelihoods. Never again would Bokuto reflect on the candles in his eyes daring to flare brighter than moonshine.

“Forget the yakuza code.” As the words thudded from his lips with the weight of marble husks, Noya thought Bokuto must not mean to address him but an unseen mass, waiting on tinterhooks for the call to rise up. “We find him and we find his reason for living and with our hands, we rid him of his gift and his life. It’s cheap. He knows as much. I’m through with mercy.” If he was honest with himself, Noya thought, his friend would acknowledge his itch for bloodshed had multiplied with years, years of watching men destroy Keiji’s life in increments, tossing it off as a lark.

“So certain our murderer was a man, Bokuto?” Humor, at a time like this, was crass. But Noya found he wielded it with an intelligence envied by all he befriended. At least Bokuto accepted it, laughing mirthlessly.

“It wasn’t one of Oikawa’s hags. I heard about Kageyama shutting them up.” His eyes, downcast, darkened. “Ushijima better watch that boy. He’s mocking death, and one of these days, Ol’ Grim’s gonna tire of brushing off the hurt.”

_He already has_. But Noya knew his friend knew this. They all did, in their own way. Only Kageyama looked the truth in the face with a smirk.

“Leave Tobio and his dalliance with mortality to me, Koutarou.” Prickles of ice trickled down Noya’s back as Oikawa crept through the sliding door of paper, kneeling on the pale green tatami with a grave ceremony. “Rest assured, I am not to blame for Keiji’s demise. Showing my face after murdering your beloved would constitute as the single greatest act of stupidity in my sputtering candlewick of a life.”

_He sure has a way with words_, Noya thought.

“Who killed him, then?” No trace of affability rang from Bokuto’s voice, his eyes glinting with the sheen of polished steel. “You may not have done it, or so you say, but I guarantee you or one of your men knows who did.”

A flat glimmer of a smile spliced Oikawa’s face. Drawing a slick black pistol from his suit jacket, he thrust it out with an unthinking aim and fired a clean shot in the back of Noya’s head. Grunting with mild disgust, he dabbed at the spray of blood and detritus clinging to his once clean white ensemble.

“Secrets cost hard cash, Koutarou. If you want to pay, then you fucking pay.”

The old Oikawa, the one Bokuto thought he knew, would not have strangled his dignity with no thought of the aftermath. Reading the currents of his thoughts, Oikawa laughed, the sound a deranged imitation of a jaunty refrain.

“Mention Ushijima in my presence and I’m liable to, shall we say, _snap_. Now and again, I convince myself I’ve already killed the man!”

Bokuto stifled the queasiness knotting his gut. Staring at Noya, unmoving, a gruesome requiem of his distant past, he breathed through his nose. Unrelenting, the stench of death fogged over the room.

“If I extend my kindness to your sorry ass,” Oikawa said, “then you better promise me.” On his knees, prostrating himself against the rough caress of the tatami, Bokuto ignored the cloying clogging of tears in his throat.

“I beg of you, Oikawa. I’ll do anything you ask.” His laughter mangled his soul, obliterating what remained of his conscience.

“See to it that Ushijima dies. But make damn well sure he dies under Tobio’s hand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	5. Untethered

An orchid spread its wafer-thin petals down his arm as Kageyama punctured a familiar vein. He listened to Ushijima’s peaceful breathing beside him, drifting back to loving him only moments before. The boundless well of adoration he stored within himself was as sacred to Ushijima as his family name. What remained elusive, however, was the kid from whom the fatal blade had flown, killing their dear friend.

Right away, Kageyama had known who had dealt the cunningly thoughtless blow. It wasn’t Tendou. He thought too much, that one. And it wasn’t Semi. Lacking Tendou’s taste for showing off, Semi saw to what needed accomplishing with minimal fanfare and such scarce evidence as to render police investigations of his crimes laughable. Without a doubt, Shirabu had seen the deed done. Possessing a sourness of disposition that rendered him immune to commonplace human comprehension, he committed any and all acts of brutality sustained by the righteous upholding of the Shiratorizawa code. Fearing his reputation had begun to tarnish their already eroding standing, their chief had resorted to sending their gopher on their last few calls. Desperation had lured Shirabu from his underground burrow. Dealing with him required the finesse of someone on intimate terms with a hunger that was never fully satisfied.

Removing the needle, Kageyama laid it on top of the paperback novel sliding off the nightstand, another one by his beloved Dazai. He soaked in the overwhelming heat of Ushijima’s warmth, straddling his back once more, the thought of tearing himself away spiking his gut with an inhuman rage.

_If he stayed_, _they would come for him and kill him without sparing Ushijima’s grief a second thought_.

Sliding up and off of the bed, he pulled on his wrinkled black work pants from the floor and yanked on a freshly bought white shirt from the foot of the bed. In the grey wisps of morning light cast over the room like swaying stalks of grass, he thought he saw Ushijima’s stare bearing down on him, full of an aching sorrow.

“Careful out there.”

He thought he heard those words right, but afterwards he figured he must have tricked himself.

* * *

Once, early on into their courtship, Ushijima had brought him to Shiratorizawa’s grounds. Upon their arrival, memories of the home from which he fled so carelessly had toppled him over his feet, ruining the first impression on his lover’s friends. They had soon forgiven him for his error, all but Shirabu, for whom that fumble had yet to fade into a recollection mused over with laughter.

It was an old house, reeking of old money. The absence of dust on the windowsills and in the hushed corners spied by the most discerning eyes spoke of maids tasked with the meticulous minding of the estate’s cleanliness. Outside the carefully curated garden blossomed with overgrown clusters of sensuous peonies. In the springtime, the cherry blossoms shed their heartbreaking petals, mingling with the plum blossoms planted in tandem alongside bushels of white roses. These Kageyama found unnerving, blowing in the wind, like looming, silent harbingers of death.

Beside the garden, dating back to the estate’s foundation in the time of prominent samurai, stood a walled partition, its ground coated in fine white sand. An elegant black rake with which one moved the ground in meditative thought lay facedown, its legs having recently driven a passage. In this encasement of serenity, Kageyama found Shirabu, turned away from him and inspecting a smudge on his nail. It was not, as Kageyama had thought, a blot of ink, but a drop of blood. He became aware of an overpowering scent as he approached Shirabu from behind, stopping dead when, not in the least bit ruffled, he spoke.

“If I’m going to die, at least grant me the privilege of looking at your face, _Tobio_.”

“How did you know?” The laughter, barely there to begin with, vanished from Shirabu’s voice as he peered over his shoulder.

“Only you are brazen enough to try your luck at offing me in broad daylight, and without the help of our great Ushijima.”

His name, coming from Shirabu, with the possessive taint of ownership, stung.

“Why did you do it? What business did you have killing someone as blameless as Akaashi?”

“Blameless?” He knew why Shirabu always aided him in forgetting his footing, forgetting pressing matters, forgetting his vices. Without knowing it, Shirabu suffocated him with the weight of his impending mortality. “Don’t you remember the lies that man spoon-fed to you about us? Brainwashed Wakatoshi into thinking we were bloodsucking pariahs. We need Wakatoshi back more than your drug-addled brain can begin to comprehend, yakuza scum.”

_Hypocrite_. He had never felt closer to Ushijima’s brethren than he did now, dusting off the insult with the scowl of a rangy dog foaming at the mouth. “My love for Toshi runs deeper than any drug.” Unsheathing his razor blade from the lining of his jacket, he closed the gap between them with one swallowed step, grazing the slope of Shirabu’s bobbing Adam’s apple. “You dare to question my loyalty to him. You _dare_.”

Eyes flashing with a gut-wrenching malice, Shirabu lanced his palm over the knife, clamping his hand down, a startling trickle of blood staining the cold steel. “Since when do you apply such words to yourself?” A demented imitation of a smile glittered across his face. “You shared my bed after all, not so long ago.”

Wincing, Kageyama tugged at the knife in vain, the grip a well-oiled vice. “Look me in the eye and promise you’ll forget what transpired between us.”

His eyes narrowing on a pinpoint in the distance, Shirabu dug the knife into the unblemished flesh between his fingers. “You’ll have to beg me,” he said, squinting.

In one halting motion, Kageyama tore the knife backward, sending forth a thin river of scarlet down Shirabu’s arm.

“Tobio, it’s Ushijima. He’s in danger.” As one, they turned to face Bokuto, breathing in ragged huffs, fighting the urge to collapse.

Maybe this time, Kageyama could use Shirabu's help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	6. Annihilation

So different, the three of them, but actually more similar than they could fathom. All of them united in the quest to save one man. Though Kageyama had noted Bokuto’s obvious exhaustion from the accumulated doses of terror chugging through his bloodstream, he recognized the gaping nothingness in his eyes for something else: vengeance.

He had not said one word to Shirabu. This had not escaped Kageyama’s notice.

“Keep to the road,” Shirabu said as the sleek black convertible purred down the length of the highway.

One bleak oasis of starved landscape after another brushed past them. All of the mundanity bored him. Flooring the engine, Kageyama teased the edges of the horizon to come apart at their seams, permitting him entry into an impermeable Olympus. His skin flagged against his bones, chilled with an abrasive smack of the springtime air. Roaring to life, the engine deafened him, shoveling down Shirabu’s protests with a gluttonous greed.

Scowling, he hissed through his teeth as an identical black convertible tore through the borders of his vision. Slamming on the brakes, he plunged headlong into a bracing impact, the abrupt end to their flirtation with death tossing his head back against the plush leather seat, leaving him limp as a rag doll.

"Are you trying to fucking murder me?" He was surprised Shirabu didn't kill him then and there, his eyes glistening with a crystalized wrath. 

Ignoring him, Kageyama forced himself out of the car, holding fast his razor blade, careful to conceal it from the inviting eyes of the man loping to and fro on the shoulder of the road.

Oikawa seized with laughter.

"When did you become so vile on the road, Tobio? You're going to give all the smarmy drag racers heart attacks." Behind him, Kageyama heard Shirabu and Bokuto scrambling out of the car, the former launching himself with the reckless aim of a catapult.

"The fuck have you done with Wakatoshi?" Scraping the butt of his pistol down Oikawa's opalescent head, Shirabu shook with a righteous fury. _Where had he hidden that weapon?_

"I don't have to wander five miles from my territory before I find another piece of trash who cares about that man." Knocking the gun from his hand with a blunt jerk of his head, Oikawa strung Shirabu's arms behind his back, yanking them up.

"I ask you," he said, "what's there to care about? Does anyone honest to God knowabout that man?" Yelping, Shirabu bucked against an unflinching blockade. Kageyama stepped forward.

"Take me to him, Oikawa. I'll do what you want. We can pretend however you wish." The springtime wind branded its mark across his cheeks, smacking them raw. An audible gasp shot from Shirabu's lips.

Tearing open the door of his idling black car, Oikawa shoved Shirabu into the dark interior, trapping him with one hand. "You have no idea how much that hurts, Tobio," he said. Picking up the pistol from the asphalt, he cocked it once.

"You want to pretend?" Training the pistol on an immovable target, Oikawa licked his lips. "All right. Let's play." The bullet and its blast thundered through Kageyama's ears, forcing him to his knees.

He swerved, gazing with a numb absence of comprehension. Bleeding from the heart, Bokuto slumped against the car.

Emptying the bullets from the cartridge of the pistol onto the asphalt, one by one, Oikawa sniffed. "No use pretending I'd allow Koutarou the satisfaction of avenging a snitch. Some lover, Keiji. They deserve each other."

A ravenous brute nipping at his hunger, Kageyama leapt, hurling the pistol into the waiting arms of the horizon.

"I _hate_ you." He said it through tears, pummeling his fists against Oikawa's chest.

"You're kidding yourself."

* * *

Stripping Kageyama mechanically, carrying out a routine, a cleansing ritual, he eviscerated the invisible barrier infiltrating their love. Over and over, Kageyama submitted to an intolerable orgasm, the pleasure annihilating any and all intention. Oikawa offered him no amount of relief, fucking him through the torment, preferring to break him, savoring the symphony of doom.

He thought about vivisecting Kageyama, the pleasure of romancing him past the conceivable bounds of death, when he said, "For the love of God, Tooru, don't hurt Toshi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	7. Retribution

He began to doubt the entire trajectory of his life with a conviction that serrated any hope of defeat. Perhaps the guard had not yet opened the door of his cell and the events that followed culminated in a series of hallucinations too horrifyingly tangible to bear.

From the start, he'd doubted Kageyama. As time went on, he'd thrown those doubts into the darkening cellar at the back of his head. Resurfacing in earnest, one after the other, the doubts enmeshed his brain in a dense fortress of terror. 

Prostitutes in this business acted as spies more often than not, informants for the enemy sent to acquire information and report back. Perhaps Kageyama had been acting undercover for years, waiting for the perfect moment to end the farce with a drug in his drink or a needle in his neck.

Most of the time, when Yahaba slashed his stomach with the cattails of his whip, he stopped thinking. Pain helped him forget himself. Craving the release from his fabricated torment, Ushijima submitted to the tails, bowed when they sizzled across his head.

"You're boring me. Why make this easy?" Of course, Yahaba had expected a hard-boiled veteran of injustice, thrashing against a self-imposed exile. Instead, he got a masochist. Fortunately for him, he had contended with far worse. "Let's see how you fare with _this_ diabolical contraption."

A machine, grilled in its center and affixed with hostile black claws, shone in the inescapable gaze of a flickering bulb. Plugging it into the wall, Yahaba dragged it to the chair, feeding the victim to its claw. He'd switched the apparatus on, assured in its aptitude for mental erosion. Ushijima screamed, the sound dredged from a fear years in formation.

"It's the suckers for this shit that irk me," Yahaba said, cranking the lever up. As the screams shook the balls of his feet, he smiled.

"You're a lamentable sadist, you twisted fuck." 

Flitting through the darkness on wings of death's angel, the blade scissored through his neck, drowning Yahaba in a current of his own blood.

The precision, the breathtaking poise shown in the belly of a beastly undertaking, revealed Ushijima's savior straight away. 

"Hello, Semi," he said as the young man tore through the coarse rope binding his hands.

"Everyone's waiting. I'll get you out of this creature in no time." His friends, brothers in all but name, waited for him. A film of tears clouded his eyes.

"Where's Tobio?" Semi gently removed his length from the jaws of the machine, kicking it under the chair.

"Oikawa assumes you've tired of the kid. He's, how should I say this, adopted the lad as a sort of frivolity meant to adorn his person at all times. Am I making sense?" _Too much, in fact_. _Ever the blunt one, our Semi._

"We'll go see the man. That's what he wanted, after all. We might as well satisfy his urges."

"You're frightening when you're angry, Wakatoshi." He wished otherwise. In many ways, he'd have it easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


	8. Phantasmagoria

"Welcome to our Grand Guignol, Tobio."

Stretched out before him in a shifting frame of grotesquerie, Kageyama reacquainted himself with the instruments of pain and desire: silver braces that elongated the human mouth, the rack shrouded in a sepulchral white veil, a cleaver one used for meat and stripping one of their flesh, a catafalque lined in black velvet beneath a voluminous white shroud from which emanated a putrid odor of the long since deceased. Bluebeard, omnipresent, leered at him, a man who laughed at all he witnessed. Though these remained elusive, his mind conjured a vison of bodies, draped along the walls of the bloodied chamber. 

He loved Toshi, and always would, right down to when his body decayed into rotting soil and a skeleton the shade of sour milk waited to join his own in the dirt. He knew him and he loved him, but he had yet to know Tooru.

He craved more, Kageyama knew this much, more of what his parents deprived of him in their house with his servants and his bespectacled, stuck-up tutor. Expectations and rules in the form of lifeless books. He remembered the times he swore at his father, afterwards escaping into the uncaring night, loitering in the shadowed entryway of the Hummingbird until Tooru stole him, scolding him for drinking overpriced piss and bruising his pale neck with greedy bites in his lap in a purring black car.

Of course, drinking hadn't served as a vice for much longer after that. So immersed was he in the thrashing waves of love that Kageyama was submerged when Tooru trapped an untouched vein, sealing his boundless good fortune with a clean syringe. Later, he found out its name from a kind, quiet boy, a servant from Guangzhou to whom he made savage love on a table carved from _hong mu_, a material so fine the boy told him the English had no word for it. Heroin, he said, a depressant. Days later, he learned the boy had killed himself, overdosing on the white lady, a flower blooming in the womb of malice. Cursing their neglect, their ignorance, their superiority, he had parted with his parents with the name of the dead boy on his lips.

* * *

He killed for heroin, forgetting his inadequacy, teaching himself to kill through a methodical, prolonged torture of the mind. In this way, he met Ushijima Wakatoshi, dancing the dripping liquid blade of his knife along the young man's grave throat long after the Shiratorizawa regulars had retired from the hall. A bigger man than he had conceived, Kageyama trembled, the knife drooping between his fingers, nicking at the skin. He gasped when Ushijima, sorrowfully, aware of the futility in the gesture, traced his fingers along his open mouth, grazing his thumb along his lip and pausing on the edge of his tongue.

"Won't you give me one night of your love, Tobio?"

He had heard that one before, but not without the belligerence from alcohol. Kageyama had known, then, that he had met the love of his life.

But heroin robbed him of his senses. It robbed him of caring when Ushijima's own men hunted him and threw him in jail under the false pretense of murder (and of their own chief, no less). Tooru aided him in this ruthless ambition, this fruitless endeavor. Murdering Hinata, as Tooru had intended, catapulted him over the edge. Yet by then, Kageyama knew he wanted Tooru to hurt him, needed it more than heroin, more than his paperback novels. Never more than Ushijima, though.

This long-cherished wish Tooru fulfilled night after night, scaling his tongue along the unseen landscapes of Kageyama’s ass, commanding the titillating spool of his flesh with an unutterable finesse, fucking Kageyama as he moaned in despair for his darling _Toshi. _

Tonight, Tooru planned to reward Kageyama for his infinite gratitude. A terrific shock accounted for his silence when Kageyama thrust him into the catafalque, suffocating his undulating limbs beneath the heavenly shroud.

"You threw my life away. Nothing but garbage! Can you begin to imagine how I worshiped you?" Who would have thought that this day would come, Kageyama setting his soul aflame, tied to a stake?

"Don't kill him, Tobio. Not yet." 

In that moment, the unmistakable wolfish growl of Ushijima's voice hollowing out the core of his foundations, Oikawa Tooru believed in miracles.

"Oh, _Toshi_, would that you killed me now only to resurrect me with your sweet love." 

A reunion, then, followed by a shuddering, desperate and boyish moan. _Enough!_

Flinging the shroud from his body, kicking it into a cumbersome clump on the serpentine green floor, Tooru crawled his way out of the catafalque. He understood, then, how deeply Ushijima loved Kageyama, feasting on him as he did with the bonedeep gluttony of a prisoner savoring their first home-cooked meal.

"Gentlemen," he said, "we have business to which we must attend." Surprising him again, Ushijima cocked a dark greying eyebrow, breaking from his embrace.

"I can guess at what you mean." Splaying the fingers of Ushijima's left hand along his lips, Kageyama took each one into his mouth in turn, sucking on them with the thoughtless diligence of a child licking an ice cream cone dry. An itch spread to the tips of Tooru's fingers. Striking the florid crimson wallpaper, he shrank in fury as Ushijima spoke.

"If we kill Kunimi, Oikawa, you'll have no one left to love you, no one but Tobio." Hadn't this long-cherished wish sustained him throughout?

"Of course. But first, we free Shirabu."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:  
Short comments  
Long comments  
Questions  
“<3” as extra kudos  
Reader-reader interaction  
This author replies to comments.


End file.
